"Today, the first and perhaps the only duty of the philosopher is to defend man against himself: to defend man against that extraordinary temptation toward inhumanity to which - almost without being aware of it - so many human beings today have yielded."
Gabriel Marcel

02 June 2015

Who or What Is Killing the Bankers of Wall Street?

"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control.

A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules ... In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."

Francis I

"He was a murderer from the beginning, not standing with the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of lies."

John 8:44

It feeds on whatever is fragile, vulnerable, whether it be the environment, the public peace, the weak, the marginalized, the poor, the disabled, or the hearts and minds of children.

Peace and love are weakness; conquest and plunder are our calling.

There are a number of possible explanations for this recent cluster of untimely deaths on Wall Street.

They may be suicides. The culture of pressure and high stakes on Wall Street is notorious. Young bankers can literally work themselves to death for managers and institutions who have little or no value or appreciation for normal human life, except for the most cynical of public masquerades.

It is a culture made for the emotionally stunted and sociopaths, for crippled human minds maintaining their existence with insensate obsessions and mindless acquisition. It takes otherwise good people and slowly turns them inside out.

It has become anti-human.

The Banks have set money and personal power above all other values, whether they involve customers or employees or the public. The gods they worship are as old as Babylon, and evil as hell.

In addition to a physical death, which is tragic enough, there are also so many more moral and emotional deaths, the long, slow strangulation and eradication of all that makes us human, which I fear claims many more souls than we might appreciate or even imagine. It hollows out people and public institutions, extending the reach of the great emptiness.

Wall Street Banker Deaths Continue; Where Are the Serious Investigations?

By Pam and Russ Martens

2 June 2015

Last Thursday, 29-year old Thomas J. Hughes, later described by his brother as 'one of the happiest people I know,' allegedly took his life by jumping from a luxury apartment building at 1 West Street in Manhattan. Before any serious investigation had taken place, the New York tabloids had dismissed the matter as a suicide. Hughes was an investment banker on Wall Street.

...for the first time in two centuries, iconic Wall Street banks are being serially charged with committing felonies. These banks have known for the same 18 months that bankers have been dying under suspicious circumstances that felony charges were coming. After a series of deferred prosecution agreements, two weeks ago on May 20, five global banks pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiring to rig markets. Two of those were U.S. banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, where recent unusual deaths have occurred.

In any serious investigation, law enforcement is required to look at any potential motive for foul play. But when it comes to serial deaths among Wall Street bankers and technology personnel, occurring repeatedly over the last 18 months in highly unusual circumstances, the deaths are almost instantaneously labeled non-suspicious by the police. But there are two glaring motives for foul-play in almost all of these deaths involving Wall Street or global banks...

Le Propriétaire

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Need Little - Want Less - Love More

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.

"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership cannot reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without implicating a broad swath of the powerful, including themselves.

The moneyed interests and their aspirants tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so. Discipline is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and career and social coercion."

These are personal observations about the economy and the markets. In providing information, I hope this allows you to make your own decisions in an informed manner, even if it is from learning by my mistakes, which are many. As a standing policy I never provide individual investment advice to anyone. I will only occasionally disclose my personal positions for purposes of illustration. Understand that my own circumstances could differ greatly from your own, and therefore what is suitable for me may not be suitable for you. My comments are intended to be reflection on general macro financial and economic events and trends.